Hair Hair Everywhere ...Try Not to Clog the SINK!

I have been trying for a week without success to come up with a witty knock-off of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. "Hair, hair everywhere try not to clog the sink" is all I have managed to come up with. While it rhymes, my sentence is lost in translation. It might be fitting if I was BALD. I realize the point is that there is no clean drinking water while surrounded by the ocean and thus, I should have NO HAIR while surrounded by Hair to make a point. I only feel like I must Bald or at the very least getting close.

May I present HAIR in three Acts - No intermission.

I wish I had a dime

For every person who has commented on hair in my lifetime

I would have Finley's first year of college paid for by now!

Finley was not even out of my body when our midwife said, "Look at all that dark curly hair! " Suddenly I had five sets of eyes checking out my nether regions then commenting on the baby's hair. 'I sure hope it's a girl with all that hair. "You can already put it in pig tails I think!" I simply said or thought "CURLS? No one has curls who's kid is this?" There are no curls just lots of dark straight hair. Untamable hair. In the NC humidity it stands straight up in the air! Every passerby comments on the baby - "look at all that hair!" OR " My baby had that much hair." OR "Usually it falls out and comes back in later but your baby has not lost a HAIR." You get the point.

Finley 13 weeks old.

ACT ONE

Much like Finley, I was born with a head full of hair. My mother loved to tell the story about how she had to cut my hair out of my eyes at 6 months of age. My hair has been talked about for as long as I can remember. My kindergarten teacher used to brush and braid my hair while the other kids in class had "nap-time." Every hair dresser I ever saw called it a hairdresser's dream. I had a full head of straight, long, fine, healthy hair. I mean full. The first modelling gigs I landed were booked because of my hair. As got older my hair loss was pretty normal for a gal who hot rolled, flat ironed and blew dry her locks. I have always had to clean up the drain on the weekly and keep the floor swept.

ACT TWO

When I got pregnant I never saw MY hair ANYWHERE. It stopped falling out, it stopped growing on my legs and face, I had a break from hair maintenance. Ah, it was so nice not to wax, shave, vacuum the floor or unclog the drain as often. The only hair I was cleaning up for 9 months was my hubby's. (It strikes me as coincidental that he shaves his head on the day or day immediately following the day I clean our white tiled bathroom. He does clean up after himself in that hurried man clean kind of way. I always sneak behind him to detail. Yes, have already admit to having a cleaning obsession.)

ACT THREE

Lady Pushing baby carriage: Hey, has your hair begun to fall out?

Me: What? No! What do you mean has my hair begun to fall out?

Lady: Oh about three months after the baby is born your hair WILL fall out.

Mine came out in patches in big clumps. See?

OMG! What is this nasty bit of news? No one mentioned this fate BEFORE I got knocked up. It reminds me of a trip I made to the vet with my stinky mouthed Yorkie. Why on earth does he stink so bad I ask the vet? The vet says - it's his teeth - Yorkies are prone to gingivitis. You have to have his teeth cleaned and likely some extractions. We will sedate the dog for this treatment and you should do it once a year. Um, yeah? I read every book on Yorkies before I bought one and nowhere did it mention rotten mouth. The Vet said if you knew would you have gotten one? He had a point. Does What to Expect When you are Expecting have a chapter devoted to post-partum hair loss? If so I didn't read to the end of the book. Obviously.

Ever since Finley was born mothers have asked me this question and then they show me their bald patches and regrowth. This is more horrifying to me than all the women who shared their birthing HORROR stories BEFORE I gave birth to Finley. (Why do women do that? They should share the horror story AFTER you have been inducted into the child birth club - another blog for another day)

There is hair all over my house. I leave a trail. I am pulling clumps out of my butt crack after I shower and then I have to extract it from the drain. I have not dried my hair lately for fear I will blow the remaining hair right off my head. I imagine a tumble weed of hair rolling around the tiles after I am done and then I look in the mirror only to see Kojak looking back at me. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

I have to swipe the hair off my pillow in the morning and then look through the pile of hair to find Finley who resembles Cousin It by morning. I then pick all the hair off her and from the folds in her cutie pie little neck. I bet she is reconsidering the co-sleeping thing.

I am losing so much hair I am wondering if I should be saving it to make wigs for myself to sport three months from now when I might actually be a bald woman. Also, I am so vain I had my human hair "extensions" coloured to match my current hair colour in the event I should need them soon. That is if I have enough hair left to clip them onto.

FINALE

Um, yeah. For those of you who have not yet had your baby and are basking in the; I have fantastic hair phase of pregnancy - Beware post pregnancy hair loss is NOT an urban legend. Your hair WILL fall out!

Baby Weight

Hey Mommas!

Can post-partum HAIR-LOSS be factored into baby weight loss?

If so, I MUST be close to my pre-baby weight.

Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to vacuum the bathroom floor AGAIN I go. Honestly the vacuum looks like I have trapped a squirrel in it with all the hair wrapped around the Hepa filter.

Happy Friday

(Yay me - I actually know what day it is.)

Vacuum TRUMPS Lullabyes

Our baby has been very fussy the past week.  It starts up at around 6pm and caries on until ten or eleven pm.  Why? We thought it was onions and she was gassy. So I eliminated onions from my diet (see ya in 8 months my oniony old friends).  Then we thought she might be constipated. No that is rare in a breast fed baby.  We asked around and were told:

 Sometimes babies just fuss. 

Hahah you have children this routine until they are 35.  

Yes, babies have their own temperament. 

They'll grow in and out of these phases. 

Wait until she starts teething - it's enough to make you want to leave home.

SUPER! These are the types of advice you are not told until the deal is signed sealed and delivered.  Before that you get told how wonderful babies are and how amazing the love and the faces of your child are. And they are. The tears are part of it - for both parent and child!

I read up on COLIC. Apparently babies born naturally - drug free- are NOT usually colicky. MY BABY DID NOT GET THIS MEMO!  I also read that colicky babies like movement and repetitive noise.  So for the first week I bounced up and down on my 19" exercise ball. She fell asleep and I worked my abs, we mowed the lawn (we have a push mower no motor), we played Hip Hop music and danced in the kitchen almost all day Sunday when she was colicky from 1pm to 10pm and we've been on countless walks. She likes to be in the front carrier for all of these wonderful activities. By yesterday momma was tired.  Dad Dad had just come off a string of days in charge in the E.D and he was tired. We traded her off all day and then...I looked around my house and saw dust bunnies the size of our dog and decided...THE CURE TO COLIC TONIGHT WILL BE THE VACUUM.

Guess what? It was!  She fell asleep in no time. She stayed asleep. My house is clean and we both woke up this morning with a smile.